Journaling
A journal of journeys
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Smokehouse Creek Fire: After the Smoke Cleared
As it happened, last week I visited Pampa one week to the day after the historic fires burned across the Texas Panhandle. I lived in Pampa for twenty-five years. It’s where my children grew up. It’s where people I love still live, and a few days spent with friends feeds my soul. It hurt my heart in places I didn’t know I had, seeing the land, the Big Country, burned from horizon to horizon. I could not know who or what lay in the path of this destructive force that devoured lands and properties. I could not imagine the fear that blanketed the surrounding towns, towns I know by name,…
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Expectations Rob Us of Joy
Another journal, another entry, a note to self revealed that my expectations of other people presents a recurring problem for me. [1] But what if the person of whom I have expectations is the person who raised those expectations in the first place? What if a failure to meet those expectations undermines my trust in that person’s word? Someone I trusted either forgot what they said or else changed their mind. Does this call into question their character? Anyone in whom you or I place confidence can fail to meet our expectations. It could be a teacher, a doctor, a friend, a spouse, colleagues. Confidence begins to corrode. Like most…
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Old Journals: Notes to Self
While convalescing from illness, I picked up one of my old journals to read through. There’s something magnetic about revisiting words you yourself have written, especially what was written years ago. What’s different? What’s remained the same? This particular journal was given to me by my friend on August 1, 2001. I didn’t start writing in it until July 2002, and it covers the period when I was in seminary up to 2007, a year before I graduated. My friend died in 2006––the kind of death that makes anyone in the wake of tragedy both sad and mad. I wrote about my grief in a different journal. Throughout this journal,…
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Affected by Addiction? How Reading Other People’s Stories Can Help
In early February, I finished reading Elizabeth Vargas’s book: Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction. Like so many other good books I have read, approaching the last pages, I wonder how in the world of words can the writer conclude their story in so few pages? Then, POW! Because all books have to stop on a page, (even though life stories continue to unfold), Elizabeth’s wrap-up punched a hole in this reader’s armor. Bodily reaction to the pain she so poignantly described included tightness in my chest, shallow breathing, leaking eyes, and an audible gasp as this book made me think about my mom. My mom was a…
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Survivors of an Alaskan Adventure
As the captain of the ship pulled into port in Juneau, Alaska, guiding this massive vessel as if parallel parking between other cruise ships, I thought of my mother trying to teach me how to parallel park a car. Alaska always makes me think of my mom. One time, Mom came home from work, her eyes dancing and her tongue wagging as she played with the idea of moving to Fairbanks, Alaska. Like a cat with catnip, she pawed and batted the prospects, and I don’t remember when she lost interest. A great place to visit, but I would not want to live there. My mom, a young widow, displayed…
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Into the Wild of Alaska: Adventure Stories and Perspective
Yesterday’s visit with a friend who stopped by, this friend who lives in the mountains of Colorado surrounded by wilderness, prompted memories and conversation about the 15 day trip my husband and I took to Alaska. This was our second trip, and what I had in mind was a couple of weeks on board a ship, resting and recovering, and celebrating my recent graduation from 4 arduous years in seminary. Instead, we boarded a ship in Vancouver that let us off in 3 days for the rest of the journey through Alaska and the Yukon by train, boat, bus, and some of the territory traveled on foot. Who knew? Much…
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When Kids Say the Funniest Things
I hope you write down what your kids or grandkids say when what they say makes you laugh. Adults need more refreshing spontaneity of children and less duplicity from adults. If you are a teacher of children, you have an unending supply of funny things that kids will say. Somewhere I have a book that a teacher compiled after asking her students how to cook a turkey. She asked these young children to draw a picture of their Thanksgiving turkey and give instruction for how to cook it. The one I remember: “Get up in the middle of the night. Turn the oven to 2 degrees.” A child’s perception of…